.webp)
Cloud computing is revolutionizing how organizations access technology resources and empowering digital transformation. Microsoft Azure is a leading cloud computing platform that offers powerful solutions to help businesses achieve their goals. As an IT consulting firm focused on practical solutions, Practical Solutions, Inc. has helped many clients leverage Azure's capabilities for success.
In this blog post, we'll explore the top Azure solutions the consulting firm has seen make the biggest impact for their customers across various industries. From infrastructure and platform services to AI, database, and security tools - Azure has the technologies to take your business to new heights. We'll provide real-world examples of how these solutions have benefited Practical Solutions, Inc.'s clients and outline key considerations for getting started.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
One of the foundational pillars of Azure is its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings. IaaS allows you to deploy and run virtual machines (VMs), websites, and backend systems on Azure infrastructure managed by Microsoft. This takes away the heavy lifting of owning and operating physical servers and data centres.
Practical Solutions, Inc. has seen IaaS transform countless industries by enabling agility, resilience, and scalability. For example, one manufacturing client was struggling with long lead times and costs related to on-premises hardware upgrades. They migrated their core systems to Azure VMs and implemented an auto-scaling solution using Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets. This allowed their applications to dynamically scale based on usage patterns, drastically improving performance and reducing costs.
With IaaS on Azure, you pay only for the compute resources you use without huge upfront hardware expenses. Resources can be provisioned with just a few clicks through the Azure portal or APIs. Running your infrastructure in the cloud also makes it easy to maintain high availability across regions with automatic failovers.
For many scenarios, IaaS on Azure remains the most cost-effective approach compared to building everything yourself from scratch. The platform services like networking, storage, identity management integrate seamlessly with IaaS resources for a simplified Azure cloud management experience.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Once Practical Solutions, Inc.'s clients get comfortable running infrastructure in Azure, the next stage of cloud adoption is often leveraging Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. PaaS allows you to deploy applications without worrying about managing the underlying infrastructure. This saves further time and resources compared to IaaS.
Practical Solutions, Inc. has seen great success using Azure App Service to host web applications for various clients. App Service is a fully managed PaaS for building and deploying web, REST API, and mobile back-end applications using .NET, .NET Core, Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP and Python. It handles auto-scaling, high availability, security patches, and upgrades completely for you so your developers can focus on coding.
For instance, they helped an e-commerce client replace their aging on-premises web servers with App Service. This allowed fast scalability during sales periods and automatic software updates. It also provided built-in features for authentication, CORS support, staging slots for testing, and one-click publishing from Git repos - saving countless hours of routine tasks.
Other popular PaaS services on Azure include Azure Databases, Azure Container Instances, Azure Functions, and Azure Kubernetes Service. Each solves a unique scenario with managed deployment and operations. Moving to PaaS on Azure removes a big layer of Azure cloud management infrastructure for agility and cost optimization.
AI and Cognitive Services
Artificial intelligence is transforming industries and Azure has a full suite of AI capabilities clients can leverage right away. Rather than building your own AI infrastructure from the ground up, Azure makes these superpowers accessible through high-level services.
Practical Solutions, Inc. has helped various businesses unlock new revenue streams and efficiencies through AI applications powered by Azure cloud management services like Computer Vision, Face API, Speech to Text, and others. For instance, one hospital was struggling with the backlog of processing patient intake forms. Using Form Recognizer, they created an AI model that could extract data from forms with near-perfect accuracy of Azure data services.
The possibilities are endless when you combine business domain expertise with AI smarts offered through Azure Cognitive Services. Practical Solutions, Inc helps clients think creatively to develop impactful AI solutions that drive competitive advantage in a responsible way.
Database and Analytics
At the heart of every digital business are databases and analytics capabilities to extract insights from data. Azure offers a powerful suite of database and analytics Azure services that scale from small test projects to global enterprise workloads.
For NoSQL and document data, Cosmos DB is the clear leader - supporting multiple APIs and elastic scaling to thousands of requests per second. Practical Solutions, Inc. helped a retail client migrate their catalogue data from an on-prem MongoDB to Cosmos DB. This enabled fast global read/write access for their applications and near-real-time analytics with change feed support.
When it comes to analytics, Azure Synapse Analytics provides limitless integrated data warehousing and big data analytics at any scale. They've seen Synapse transform supply chain visibility for manufacturers and personalize customer experiences with AI across various industries. With tools like Power BI, Azure Stream Analytics, Azure data services - Azure handles all your data processing, movement and insights needs effortlessly.
Modernizing to Azure database and analytics services opens up new possibilities through features like elastic scaling, auto shares, change data capture, serverless compute options and more. Ultimately, insights from data drive better business decisions so these services are crucial for digital transformation success.
Containers and Microservices
Another major trend today is the shift towards containerized, microservice-based applications for scalability, resilience and agility. Azure is a leader in the container space with services like Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Container Instances (ACI).
One FinTech client Practical Solutions, Inc. worked with redesigned their core banking platform into containerized microservices using AKS for production deployments across regions. This delivered near-real-time data synchronization, auto-scaling and availability. They also helped a media company replace their monolithic video processing workflows into serverless container jobs on ACI. This boosted throughput and enabled elastic auto-scaling to meet spikes in demand.
Containers and microservices allow applications to evolve freely without dependencies. Combined with Azure's native Kubernetes support and auto-scaling, it's the optimal architecture for cloud-native workflows. Teams can deploy continuously without worrying about infrastructure changes.
With tools like AKS and ACI, building cloud-native and container-first is easy on Azure compared to managing your own container orchestration platform. Azure also delivers best- practices through partnerships with Docker, VMware and other providers along with a growing ecosystem of serverless and Azure services optimized for containers. Overall, containers plus Azure are the ideal foundation for agile application development.
Developer Tools and Frameworks
Whether starting new projects or modernizing existing ones - Azure provides a comprehensive suite of developer tools and frameworks to boost productivity. Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, GitHub along with language-specific extensions make Azure a breeze to work with from local development through deployment.
Practical Solutions, Inc. often helps clients onboard existing .NET or Java applications to Azure with little code changes. For example, they migrated a law firm's legacy desktop apps to a web interface using Visual Studio and published them securely to Azure App Service - removing the need for local installation.
Azure also makes DevOps practices easy through solutions like Azure DevOps, enabling continuous delivery from code commits all the way to production deployments. Overall, the developer tools ecosystem on Azure is extremely rich for building new cloud applications or migrating existing ones seamlessly.
Security
Ensuring security and compliance is paramount for any workload but especially those handling sensitive data. Azure provides a comprehensive set of security services, policies and certifications to keep your applications and data safe with Azure data services.
For network security, Azure Firewall, Web Application Firewall (WAF), VPN Gateway and more protect access while Azure Active Directory (AAD) takes care of granular access control and multifactor authentication (MFA) for users. For data security, services like Azure Confidential Computing, Key Vault and encryption capabilities help meet industry regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, ISO.
Conclusion
Microsoft Azure provides powerful cloud services from infrastructure to AI that can propel any organization's digital transformation. As a leading consultant for Azure solutions, Practical Solutions Inc. helps clients unlock these capabilities through proven implementations.
Rather than tackling cloud alone, engage advisors with real-world experience across industries. Practical Solutions Inc. understands unique needs, seamlessly migrates workloads, and ensures security, performance and cost optimization on Azure.
Whether you are starting or expanding your cloud adoption, Practical Solutions Inc. delivers tailored strategies and execution excellence. Contact them to discuss innovative ways Azure can help achieve your strategic goals through practical solutions.
